Essay by Eric Worrall
“Over reliance on coal and ‘sweating the asset’ of coal-fired power is [a] far more serious threat to reliability than renewables will ever be.”
‘Intermittent’ coal won’t keep the lights on: Bowen
Ryan Cropp Energy and climate reporter
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has ramped up his criticism of the Queensland government’s new energy policy, arguing its plans to indefinitely extend the closure of coal-fired power plants will raise electricity prices and lower reliability.
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Mining billionaire and clean energy investor Andrew Forrest on Friday said Queensland had incredibly good renewable energy resources, but would be left behind if it remained wedded to old technologies.
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Critics of renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar farms describe them as intermittent power sources because they can only generate electricity at certain times of day or in response to certain weather conditions.
But Bowen said a major outage at Queensland’s Callide C coal plant in 2021 had raised wholesale prices by $30 per megawatt hour and left half a million people without power, while the average level of coal capacity that was unavailable due to outages increased by 28 per cent in the second quarter of 2025.
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“Over reliance on coal and ‘sweating the asset’ of coal-fired power is [a] far more serious threat to reliability than renewables will ever be.”
…
Read more: https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/intermittent-coal-will-push-up-prices-bowen-20251024-p5n4zf
If you are wondering how anyone could ever describe coal as less reliable than renewables, Federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen has repeatedly demonstrated his rather shaky grasp of engineering. For example, he thinks you can store electricity like water.
What can I say? I’m glad I live in Queensland.
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Left behind? Like China and India?
If this man saw a child right next to him on a bridge fall into a river, he would call a committee to consider filing legislation to build a dam to stop the flow of the water.
For sure – not.
They never do or built useful fhings.
He’d rather destroy 100 dams or power plants before building a single one.
But he will call a committee that willl confirm that the kid was pushed by co2 or committed suicide because AGW.
“…clean energy investor Andrew Forrest….” says it all.
Bowen doesn’t live on planet Earth.
Questioning the reliability of coal, and trying to compare it to unreliable windmills and solar is the proof.
What is it about the British Empire that makes some people such CO2-phobes? Bowen in Australia and Miliband in the UK. Both delusional. Both don’t see the trainwreck they are creating, with their fixation on windmills and industrial solar, coming.
Australia and Britain have dropped the ball on science education. The overwhelming majority of school leavers for at least the last few decades have had very little exposure to science, and are allowed to drop science and focus on humanities as soon as their little brains hurt. Even in my day I was lucky I went to a good school, otherwise I’d be in the same boat.
People who haven’t been exposed to science don’t have the knowledge to judge the nonsense politicians like Bowen and Miliband push. If you don’t have the knowledge and skill to work the numbers for yourself, you are forced to trust and defer your judgement to authority figures. And Bowen and Miliband are very good at posing as people who know what they are talking about – I suspect because through their own ignorance they are true believers themselves, deferring to the authority of whatever con-artist has their ear.
It is no accident many regulars on WUWT have a science or engineering background.
“If you don’t have the knowledge and skill to work the numbers for yourself, you are forced to trust and defer your judgement to authority figures.”
It’s about numbers, more than science. Of course a few basic concepts like energy density help, but it’s mainly numeracy that allows one to see the folly of net zero.
“many regulars on WUWT have a science or engineering background.”
Or both. 😉
I was lucky enough to go to a school where the headmaster, although a classicist, encouraged the science departments and benefited from this with a good science education, particularly in physics.
However I remember one of the classics masters saying that it was a matter of pride that he had never visited the science department. Pupils who have been exposed to this mindset are now in government with the inevitable consequences.
And what is it about the British Empire that makes some people eager to import beggars and criminals from the entire Middle East?
Um, being made vassals of Brit 2.0 Empire in all but name (q.v. Atlantic Charter etc)?
Goblin Bowen is the Aussie government’s designated shit-talker. But now it’s uncertain whether he is actually stupid and doubling down, or actually intelligent, but also a massive liar, and doubling-down. Probably a bit of both, since he’s been a fiasco in every portfolio.
If some is a failure in every domain he is smart.
And idiot can never be so effective to be an effective destructive force.
Only smart people can do that
or very dumb people who are completely controlled by very smart people – as it happened with Joe Biden.
Idiots who are highly effective are no idiots – or they are Svengalis.
The “left behind” narrative implies that there’s some advantage places with solar and wind will have over those that do not. What, exactly, is this implied advantage?
Does it make people smarter? No.
Does it improve food production? No.
Does it make energy cheaper? No (unless you ignore the reality of stabilizing the grid).
Does it create jobs? No (unless you ignore the job losses due to higher energy costs)
What, exactly, are we being left behind from?
Obviously, we are being left behind from virtuous unreality- the noble cause of `saving the planet’! Even though, increasing CO2 is reviving the planets vegetation and our food crop reliability, whilst current mild warming is highly preferable to further cooling into the next glaciation- we have only 1500-4000 years and -6C to go. So, make the best of the sun while we can, as it will remain the main control of our climate for ever.
Queensland is already up against the same issue as South Australia with utility WDGs being economically curtailed due to rooftops eroding their demand, Over the past 7 days wind in Qld generated 103GWh with 72GWh curtailed. Grid solar generated 154GWh with 52GWh curtailed.
When you build something and it cannot make money it is a stranded asset. That is what now faces Qld utility wind and solar. The grid has falling wholesale demand and rising costs. Unit costs have to spiral up.
Every new rooftop and household battery installation reduces the potential for grid scale WDGs to make money.
Blackout despises any State moving to sensible energy policy because it will highlight how bad Federal policy is for the national economy.
I’m not convinced that Blackout Bowen or the army of public serpents feeding him lines would actually recognize a sensible energy policy if it bit them on the backside.
Forrest… that recognition would depend on how much fat is on the their fundament
True, but they need a good kick up the arse right now to show them we are very tired of their ideology and bull shit policies that hurt the public but not their protected species.
Forgive my ignorance – what are WDGs?
Weather dependent generator.
I have solar panels on my roof and they are not renewing. If anything they are decaying but still deliver rated power after 15 years – German made when Germany was still making stuff.
How much of the current generation of wind and solar will be replaced if no longer being subsidised or guaranteed returns. How many homeowners will replace solar panels, and batteries, if having to pay full price to buy and install them when they may have to also pay for any excess power that goes into the grid. I had solar panels installed a year ago and am yet to see it being financially beneficial.
Bowen references a failure of a coal fired power station in 2021 that “raised price by $30/Mwh” but conveniently forgets the DAILY failure of solar to contribute to the evening peak ….which raises the price of power by much much more than $30/Mwh. AND, it’s happened more than 1400 times since the failure at Callide.. Bowen says this can be fixed by investing in more storage, BUT refuses to add the cost of storage into calculation of renewable power costs, preferring to use the inappropriate LCOE figures to push his case. If Storage, and a more complex network is required to make his renewables work, then the cost of that additional infrastructure MUST be added in when quoting cost of renewables.. Rather that use the outdated LCOE for comparison, has anyone produced a REAL WORLD comparison based on the Cost of DELIVERED electricity to the CONSUMER ??.
has anyone produced a REAL WORLD comparison…..
Yes, Rud Istvan.
True costs of wind electricity | Climate Etc.
But even this does not include the cost of curtailment or mismatches of production and demand. To do LCOE properly on a given installation you have to include all the costs of making it deliver dispatchable power to the point of use. But you also have to make sure that the only power you are including in your cost of power calculations is that which can be used, that which is produced when there is demand.
The problem with wind and solar both is that they produce power out of sync with demand. You thus have two failures, one where they fail to produce power when there is demand. The other is when they produce hugely and there is no demand.
When people calculate the cost of making an installation which contains some wind and/or solar dispatchable, they include the cost of what is usually but wrongly called ‘backup’. This takes care of the first sort of failure. But when you do LCOE you add up all the power produced over the life of the system, and then divide that into the total cost to get a cost per MWh.
The problem is, a lot of this production is wasted and unusable and so should not be counted. No-one ever takes account of this.
The effect of doing it right can be looked at in a slightly different way: it lowers the capacity factor. Say your capacity factor is 30%. That means that the installation is rated at 100 per year, and it delivers 30 per year. But if 10 of that is delivered when there is no demand, the capacity factor is really only 20%.
In addition of course there are constraint payments, when operators are paid to turn off. These costs are also never included in LCOE.
Do it right and your divisor will not be all production, but a much lower figure.
But Istvan’s piece is a respectable effort to do LCOE right even with this omission, better than any other I have seen.
It should be that any contracts to supply power into the grid should be on it being baseload power in that it is up to the provider using intermittent power to incorporate sufficient storage as an integral part of their overall system that ensures they are competing on a technical and financially equal basis with the traditional baseload generators.
kevc114,
From an Australian perspective, the cost of electricity including diverse factors like intermittency and constraint payments and odd costs that resemble taxes, do look at the studies by prominent economist Alan Moran. Geoff S
for example,
Dr Alan Moran Report – The Hidden Cost of Climate Policies and Renewables – Malcolm Roberts
Coal plants have “outages”? New one on me.
Only when they are badly maintained by owners who think they will be forced to close without compensation any minute.
In the case of Callide it was lack of routine maintenance by the previous Labor government owner that caused the plant failure, and they had to be legally forced to publish the report on the failure and its huge cost to the public for their incompetence.
Unfortunately, in Australia they do. As Eric points out, the incentive for coal plant operators to spend money maintaining or refurbishing the plant is low because it’s been made very clear for years that the intention is to shut them down.
The other problem is that they weren’t designed for rapid shifts in output. A lot of the damage is being caused by ramping up and down depending on wind and solar availability.
Bowen isn’t entirely wrong that the coal fleet as it stands has problems. What he completely fails to understand is that this isn’t some underlying trait of the technology, but that it’s a direct result of government policy. Both sides of politics, over decades.
Yes, they do. Sometimes they are unplanned, like when a piece of equipment breaks down. Sometimes they have planned outages to fix equipment where the offline time is determined ahead of time. This is a normal part of running a fossil fueled plant or any other plant. Even solar and wind plants have outages unrelated to their lack of motive force.
Unplanned outages can be increased when preventative maintenance is not performed or regular maintenance is delayed or canceled. This is affecting many coal plants in Australia. Why spend money on maintenance when the plant is going to close? I have seen a number of generating units in such circumstances, they’re held together with temporary fixes or the unit has an output curtailment that is just accepted because it costs too much to fix.
Yes, even hydro plants have shutdowns for rewinds and rebuilds of the turbines. Control electrics and hydraulics also need periodic repairs or upgrades. Equipment from the 1920’s to 1950’s has to be ripped out and replaced. It can’t be fixed. No parts.
Harold The Organic The Organic Chemist Says:
ATTN: Eric and Aussies
RE: CO2 Does Cause Warming o f Air.
Shown in the chart (See below) is a plot of the average annual temperature in Adelaide from 1857 to 1999. In 1857, the concentration of CO2 in dry air was 280 ppmv (0.55 g CO2/cu. m.), and by 2001, it had increased to ca. 370 ppm (0.73 g CO2/cu. m.), but there was no corresponding increase in air temperature. Instead, there was a slight cooling. This empirical data shows that CO2 has no influence on air temperature in Adelaide, and falsifies the claim by the IPCC that CO2 causes global warming.
For an update on recent temperature data for Adelaide, I went to:
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/adelaide/average-temperature-by-year. The Tmax and Tmin data from 1887 to 2024 are displayed in table. From this data, I computed Tavg from 1999 to 2024 which shown as follows:
Year—-Tavg,°C
2024—17.4
2023—16.7
2022—16.9
2021—16.6
2020—16.7
1999—16.9
The Tavg from the chart is ca.16.7° C. Even there was a slight increase in average temperature in 0.5°C 2024, the empirical temperature data shows that CO2 does not cause an increase of air temperature.
The chart for Adelaide was taken the late John Daly’s website:
“Still Waiting For Greenhouse” available at: http://www.john-daly.com. From the home page, page down to end and click on: “Station Temperature Data”.
On the “World Map”, click on “Australia”. There is displayed a list of stations. Click on a station to obtain the temperature chart. Click on the back arrow to return the list of stations. Clicking on the back arrow again brings up the “World Map.” Click on the chart for Darwin which shows a slight cooling.
John Daly found over 200 weather stations that showed no warming up to 2002. Unfortunately, he passed away before he could put an end to the global warming and climate change fraud.
The challenge is how to use this type of data to have Premier Anthony A. and the Canberra Climate Commissars cancel their draconian climate agenda.
PS: If you click on the chart, it will expand and become clear. Click on the “X” in the circle to return to comment text.
The climates of the northern and southern hemispheres differ due to the differences in the ratio of land versus water, the southern hemisphere dominated by oceans, the northern by land, and populations. Warming is a northern hemisphere issue, the southern hemisphere is caught up by the emphasis on the global averages.
Harold The Organic Chemist Says:
ATTN: Eric and Aussies
RE: No warming in Brisbane up to 2001
Shown in the chart (see below) are plots of the average seasonal temperatures and a plot of the average annual temperature in Brisbane from 1949 to 2001. Note how flat the plots are which shows once again that the increasing concentration of CO2 in air does not cause an increase in air temperature.
NB: If you click on the chart, it will expand and become clear. Click on the
“X” in the circle to return to comment text.
RE: CO2 Concentration Data For Brisbane
In 1949, CO2 conc. was 312 ppmv (0.61 g CO2/cu. m.)
In 2001, CO2.conc. was 370 ppmv (0.73 g CO2/cu. m.)
NB: There is little change in the amount of CO2
It is conceivable that with programmed maintenance Queenslands’s coal fired power stations could still be in operation in 25 years time whilst all the wind and solar facilities currently in existence will have reached their end of life and been decommissioned by that time.
Bowen’s comment “we can store the renewable energy if we have the investment”, he ignores the fact that whilst all things are technically possible, he needs to learn what most other people already know and that it is only those that are affordable that are viable solutions.
The ultimate test is if private enterprise is prepared to invest their own money without subsidies and operate in an open market then it likely will be viable. If subsidies and ongoing government support is required then we will be better off to keep with what has been tried and proven over time to increase prosperity until an affordable alternative comes available.
Coal? Intermittent?? GET A GRIP!
As long as Coal is taken out of the ground, coal generated electricity is available, uninterrupted, 24/7.
Solar is only available from 8 am until 4 pm and only anywhere near nameplate between 10am and 2pm in Summer.
Solar generation can also fall off with any passing cloud.
Solar generation can also fall off in winter when the path of the sun is lower in the sky.
Solar generation is also completely unavailable from 5pm (earlier in winter) until after 7:30am Zero Generation (14 hours a day every day…GUARANTEED)!
That’s why Solar has a capacity factor of 22% in the Summer and less than 10% in Winter.
.
Wind is also subject to the vagaries of weather.
If the wind is less than 9mph inertia (friction) can’t be overcome and the blades will not spin. Zero Generation!
If Wind is faster than 50-55mph turbines auto brake their blades to prevent damage. Zero Generation!
If there’s a Blocking High Pressure cell over your windfarm Zero Generation until it passes.
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Passing Storms cause both wind and solar generation to drop off. Winds can destroy solar farms and, if fast enough, topple wind towers. Hail can destroy Solar Panels with every passing storm causing long term generation failure.
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If there’s a blocking high In Winter at night then Both Wind and Solar produce Zero Generation!
And your hosed because your neighboring states are in the same predicament… Zero Generation! Nothing to share with you!
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Coal WORKS so long as you have fuel stores on site neither weather nor time of day will cause generation to fail. There’s nothing more reliable for generating electricity than Coal (except for Gas and Nuclear).
Pretty sure coal reliability hasnt gone down.
That’s absolutely impossible.
With every single year reliability of products increases(even unreliable products ), as natural result of science, engineering and experience.
This,of course, does not scale endlessly but it takes many decades within complex systems to reach the perfect balance between longivity,maintenance costs and reliability.
The only way that reliability goes down is – sabotage.
As it happened with the lifespan of lightbulbs as result of the Phoebos-Cartell.
Reliability also drops when you hand manufacturing over to, essentially, a single country aka lowest bidder.
How OLD are those Coal Plants?
How many Wind and Solar Facilities will be functional at THAT AGE??
How many Wind and Solar facilities will be “Failing” at Half that age???
Earlier in these comments Harold Peirce referenced Adelaide, South Australia.
Here is another account of its temperature history, completely independent of Harold’s work.
My article is in paper form buti it has never been submitted because gatekeepers at publishers.
It is an easy read, but I think a compelling account of what goes wrong.
Geoff S
https://www.geoffstuff.com/adelt.docx
What’s with the Disneylings pic?
It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small small world
Australians keep these ignoramuses in office.
I would say the only cause of coal power being intermittent is crappy government policy. Get the government out of energy production and transmission and coal will no longer be intermittent.
“What can I say? I’m glad I live in Queensland.”
Me too!
I’m amused that Bowen used the water storage analogy, because Australia hasn’t built a substantial dam in almost 50 years. That’s why we continue to have regular highly damaging floods across the country because, you know, the climate experts said it was never again going to rain enough to fill our dams. So we built desal plants instead – pretty much all of which haven’t been used since they were built 20 years ago. Oh, of course, ‘environmentalists’ also opposed dams because they take over large areas of former bush or threaten certain animal species – that would be the same ‘environmentalists’ who see nothing wrong with demolishing native forest and farmland for wind turbines, solar farms and tens of thousands of kms of transmission towers and lines. Let me add that if the desal plants are ever needed – and major droughts are inevitable in Australia – they are highly energy intensive. Oh, and because we’ve added ten million people to our population since the last major dam was completed, we have many more people living in flood plains. The people running this country are nuts, but Bowen takes the cake.
Sure – at what cost to real people?
Pump water uphill to a storage tank, to run down through turbines when energy needed
Buy expensive battery bans.
Those things have been done but like solar arrays and windmills take someone’s effort and materials to build. Is the goon volunteering?